Top 16 Web Design Trends for Web Designers in 2018

Advanced web design trends is the key to a shimmering website with higher conversion rates. With 2018 hitting hard on designing standards, check out the latest trends and balance your online presence seamlessly.

“Everything is designed. Few things are designed well.” – Brian Reed

As technology forges ahead, users are expecting more and more from their online experiences. Basically, web designers now brace themselves with the challenge to develop websites that talk to their users. So, what exactly a rich web design is? A website design possesses a blend of elements solely responsible to create an everlasting visual impact for visitors. Brian Reed in his famous quote has very well pinpointed the importance of a good design. Every site is designed but only those bag the victory flags which raise the designing standards.

The panorama of web design is constantly transforming. And, the adoption of the latest web design trends is the key to flow with this transformation victoriously. It is necessary to know about the latest trends especially in web design as they are so dynamic and changefast with technology. Do you abide by the fact that “what is past shall remain in the past”? If not, then you gotta lose the game. Web design trends once matured, can’t be carried forward to the next era. We at TemplateToaster blog have rounded up some of the key web design trends that will be ruling the world of web design in 2018. These web design trends will help us monitor the changes that will take place in the current year. Stay put and allow me to unfold the modern web design trends to face lift your websites in 2018.

List of Top Web Design Trends for Designers in 2018

Responsive

Accelerated Mobile Pages

Geometric Shapes

Cinemagraphs

Bright Colors and Gradients

Typography based design system

Animation

ChatBots

Video

Use of Negative Space

Unique Pictures, Graphics & Custom made Illustrations

UX writing

Voice search

Internet of things

Storytelling

Microinteractions

1. Responsive (Go Mobile)

Nearly 80% of people have smartphones and they are commonly used for visiting the web pages. In 2017, we saw a grand usage of mobile web taking over the desktop web usage. Undeniably, the beacon year of mobile web!! So, what do you think about 2018? Honestly, you can’t afford to lose your cards now since responsive mobile web design will be mandatory to save your established business from the unwanted loss. An effective, interactive and smooth mobile navigation makes a perfect responsive mobile web design. More than just a web design trend, mobile optimization is crucial to run a responsive website that keeps users onside no issue what device they are using.

Designers will have to burn the midnight fuel to provide better mobile user experiences with core focus on micro-interactions and gestures over buttons and icons. Micro-interactions make easier to identify and fix UX issues.

Google has already rolled out the mobile first index to a handful of sites and will fully launch it in 2018. The launch will pay more attention to the mobile version of your websites to rank them better in search results.

2. Accelerated mobile pages (AMP)

This can be taken as extended form of Mobile Web. Google coming to the frontline and introducing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), already provided users with a fast web surfing experience. Web Pages built using AMP load an average of four times faster than non-AMP pages. Accelerated mobile pages (AMP) are of great use as they allow the user to load the websites promptly on mobile. AMP is gradually taking shape as a web design trends for web designers to provide a mix to their website projects. AMPed pages are also given ranking boost by Search Engines. Overall, It provides nice mobile search experience.

3. Geometric shapes in Design

First of all, geometric shapes and card -based layouts never go out of style rather they are attaining more boost due to versatility of these elements and growth of mobile devices usage. Rectangular, square, circle, trapezium, hexagon triangles, rhombuses are the most used designing components in the design.

With rectangular shape you can group different types of content.This shape is also used to move easily from large screen to small. Whereas,triangles are used to force customer’s focus on a particular area of the page.
Cards are well known to Google and Android device users. They use cards for browsing content. The patterns and mixed forms will help to achieve wonderful results.

Later, geometric shapes will face a rise in the print/digital media. Geometric shapes will be used in more innovative ways in website designing as already shown by canadian design studio MSDS. The combination of ‘flat design or material design’ with geometric shapes and decorative element is supposed to spread its wings in web design trends 2018.

4. Cinemagraphs

Cinemagraphs will conquer the internet in 2018. In cinemagraph, we see that secondary elements repeatedly or minorly are in motion to spark the users interest in your product or firm.

Cinemagraphs have shown good results in conversion rate.Web designers have achieved success on client website with implementation of cinemagraphs. 360 cinemagraph on your pages or navigation is great way to ring in the new year.

Who doesn’t love a fast loading website? Well! Everyone does! Cinemagraphs load faster than videos giving you a lightweight website. Definitely, a boon for mobile functionality. Enough of talk, check out this live example of a frosted bottle. Cinemagraph provides aesthetic and production technique. There are many cinemagraph moments all around us waiting to be captured. It is one of the latest among web design trends of 2018.

5. Bright colors and Gradients in Design system

A brand is identified by various things such as symbols, shapes, logo and words but the number one component is color. Actually, colors increase brand’s identification up to 80%. Bright colors and gradients are making a big comeback. A right mix of colors enhances your firm’s personality. Duotone color schemes are greatly in web design trends as simply shown by Australian design radio radio. In 2018, colors will be seen spreading its wings from websites to mobile apps, logo and more.

6. Typography based Design System

Typography is a major player in digital web design while taking center stage as a design element. Images are slowly going out of fashion and playful, colorful and artistic fonts are taking place.

It is always beneficial for business to give thought to going after building out its own typography. Though it take time and investment in beginning but people enjoy change and it’s always better to have personalized font. These personalized fonts are useful in building company’s reputation with consumer. Many fonts are available and they are cheap in price. Even, some are free. So it’s time for fonts to shine

Bold typography is among web design trends of 2018. Bold typography is balanced out with simplistic and clean content as seen in the example from Huge, a Brooklyn-based agency. Typographical websites look visually interesting and eye-catchy.

In mobile devices, typography makes lot of sense. As images add weight to page but typography scaling size doesn’t disturb the performance. By removing images and relying on expressive typography creates more space for innovation. Typography is the best type of media for all devices without slowing the load time.

7. Animation – Among the lastest Web Design Trends

“Animation can play a huge part in making ideas and interfaces easier to understand,” says interactive designer Chris Gannon. Animation shows up as a great tool to support branding and direct attention. Widely known as to trigger a better user engagement. It is certain that animation is going to rule the world of web design in 2018. Even a small yet effective animation makes the design more dramatic and attractive giving a boost in conversion rate. A bubble animation of 7UP brand is the perfect example of a beautiful animation. Animation in logos, icons and applications creates a modern and innovative impression of the brand.

Scroll triggered animation will get a big share to rule web design trends in 2018. Interactive scroll triggered animation gives clean look to your website and motivates customer to keep scrolling down your site pages with aesthetic and interactive elements that increase usability. Thus, fulfilling the purpose of making user familiar with product and drawing them down the funnel to the conversion point. Scroll triggered animation are more educational, minimalist and designed to increase conversions.

Animated logos that tell story of your product and firm are hugely in web design trend of 2018. They are better at explaining the product than fixed logo. Undoubtedly, they are the cornerstone of a company’s brand and will make your business memorable. Animations have shown and will continue to show the brand’s strength in our digital world, giving a strong personality to the brand, making it less static and more dynamic,” says La Versa.

8. Chatbots

About 10,000 business are using their own chatbots and as per by 2020, 80% business will have bots to interact with users. ChatBots are mostly on social media messaging platforms. They are able to reach limitless audience. Chatbots are used for contacting by retailers to complete purchase funnel, used for product suggestions, also to provide answers and address customer complaints. Bots capture and analyze data. They are popular in consumers.

Personalised notifications are sent through chatbots in social media. Chatbots can give quality information to users and make interaction fun. Certain brands have found unique ways to extract information and make purchases easy that delight customers. People tend to show rude attitude towards chatbots but it hardly matters since they are here to stay owing to their smart, responsive and helpful nature.

9. Video

Video is the another way to shake up design as it attracts user to stay longer on your website. Right information in the video allows users to stay longer in your website. Better user engagement happens when Videos provide correct demonstration of your product which leads to click through and conversion rates.

Videos represents your brand’s personality. User can better know what you stand for and who you are. The consumers can see the faces behind the brand and services. It helps to build user’s interest in your business and becomes one of the reason that keep customer coming back to your site.

As a web design trend of 2018, videos will go mainstream in web designing. We expect to see websites tricked out with video mapping, 360 modeling, 360 videos and interactive videos as shown in machupicchu360vr. Conversion rate could be increased by 86% with videos on landing page.

10. Use of negative space

In web design trends 2018, simplicity will be still on rise. The minimalist and simple websites are likeable and can intrigue the customers. The blank space should be correctly utilized and noisy interface should be decreased. The white space is gaining more importance these days. This white space helps the customer focus on what you want. Firefox website is the masterpiece example to explain perfectly how the white space should be used to avoid overshadowing of user experience.

11. Unique pictures, Graphics and Custom Made illustration

Photography is finally challenged with arrival of stretch in web design field. Sketch has become popular in UI design community and in web design areas owing to their easy, clean and simple interface. Availability of plugins for sketches offer things that are important for web design and UI Projects. The work is finished faster with sketches.
Graphic illustration will be more visible as web design trend of 2018 especially, in contour drawing. Unique icons are designed with the contour drawing.

We will see the increase of hand drawn illustrations.The hand drawn illustrations are more expensive but still they are popular as they add more uniqueness and have better recognition value than stock photos.

12. UX Writing

UX writing designs the conversation between a product and its user. UX writing is the text that people see first when they look at your website and apps. The things that made UX writing popular are its self awareness, precision, clarity and consistency. It has to be concise yet communicate a lot of meanings at the same time. UX writing is in web design trends of 2018 as it is a fact that text is as much important as design.

13. Voice Search

Our soothsayer believe that voice search will take the web design industry by storm in 2018. Voice search has become more advanced and functional. This will attract more people to use voice search. In fact, 41% of U.S adults use this on a regular basis and its use is increasing day by day. We see websites with their own voice user interface. Voice search will grab user attention and increase traffic to a website. Good news for shopping lovers, as voice search will make shopping more interesting. This proves that the future of web design is not fully visual, it’s going to be audible too.

14. Internet of things

Connecting web services to the Internet of things has gained much momentum this year and it will continue on this path in the next year too. IoT are physical devices such as vehicle, home appliances and other items which are interconnected to collect and exchange data through the sensors, micro chips, softwares embedded in them to ensure network connectivity.

Smart cars, door locks, industry robots, smoke detectors, home appliances and the list is never ending for Internet of things. IoT has made lives easier, functional, efficient and productive.
The future of IoT is bright in the coming year. You will see IoT interface on websites that will allow us to communicate with smart devices.

15. Storytelling

Storytelling will hold center-stage in web designing trend of 2018 yet, it grips the potential of breaking or making the business. Storytelling reduces the dependency on big paragraphs. The websites become more personal and interesting with storytelling concept. With huge amount of well-crafted information, designers can create logical, user appealing and charming story. Rule of Three portrays as one of the best examples of visual storytelling. Storytelling is always better than reading plain text on website.

16. Microinteractions

Microinteractions are the magical little things that keep user coming back to product. Microinteraction is the loudest web design trend. Modern designs cannot go without microinteractions. It helps to communicate feedback for their actions. Microinteraction has four element trigger, feedback, rules and modes/loops. These miniscule moments may be petty but they leave an everlasting impact on user’s mood, thus, helping in manipulating the selling (conversion rate). Outerwear icons and other little moments on ecommerce websites as shown here, clearly add up to some spice in the user experience.

Gearing up to the Web Design Trends of 2018

When I say, web design trends, 2018 bounds to be a gripping year. Pull up your socks to witness a whole new experience to keep up in the field of web design. Designers now will have to open up to an advanced picture of web design trends to get through the rising standards and, mark my words, the standards will only rise high. All the above given web design trends of 2018 will help you to create a website people would love to visit . You can give completely a new look to your site by using these latest web design trends but make sure you use a proficient tool to design your website and TemplateToaster web design software comes handy since it designs SEO friendly and highly responsive themes to rank you better in search results. After all,customer satisfaction is all that matters in the end.

Need help to make an on- trend website for your business ?

With TemplateToaster, you can design awesome website. As it is crowd favourite web designer. Its million of user don’t lie!

About Deepak Singla

Deepak Singla, the backbone of Template Toaster, having expertise in Web Designing and Development. He is a knowledge enthusiast and a devoted content creator, possessing 6 years of web-related experience.